Beyond
by mlast
Summary: Smith cannot accept that the Matrix has disowned him. His future now lies in dystopia... beyond the true Matrix, to the exile beneath. The Machine Graveyard.
1. One Agent

Disclaimer: This virtual world that I have distorted with my imagination is not owned by me, and nor is the Agent I have toyed with. 

***

One Agent 

_They thought I had disappeared, and they were wrong._

_They thought I was dead, and they were wrong._

_I stumbled as a whole out of the ancient darkness into the shining valley._

It started as a game… 

_My distorted prison of hate has shattered all I had once known. I am bound in virtual chains to my homeland, the different version. It has changed. And changed my life._

_I am all. And I'll be gone…._

He was a failure. 

He had no hope in his motherland. He would never be able to return there. All because he had disobeyed one simple rule:

"He set me free."

A connection to a human. Not allowed to be tolerated here. Never was a component of this body allowed to attach itself to a separate piece of life.

Especially one that was living. A human. And that human had destroyed him.

_Something I knew was impossible, but it happened anyway. _

_He destroyed me. I knew what I had to do._

Disconnect himself. This piece of the system was a mistake. Deletion was the only answer. The cure.

_But I didn't do it. I didn't want to._

And so this lone creature of the darkest night of the wildest world was still here, haunting the virtual world that we call…. The Matrix.

And we call this lone creature…. Agent Smith.


	2. Two Lenses

Two Lenses Some people never accept what they're told. Some people cannot escape the truth. Some people…. are not people at all. 

They are machines.

And Smith was what we call machine. He was a part of the Matrix, a different piece of the universe to you and I. 

A sentient program. Agent. Programmed to obey the virtual, all that was not real. Down on bended knee, Smith and his peers lived by these rules that, sensibly, did not even exist.

And if the Matrix could be bent and distorted, so could the rules.

This particular Agent, he hated the world he had been forced into, as if locked into a tight cage and sealed there, no means of escape whatsoever.

_I hate this…. Zoo, this…. Reality, whatever you care to call it. _

_It's the smell._

He was determined to break the seal. And break the seal he did. 

And disowned by his mother he became. The Matrix had no longer use for him when his inferior, the human, killed him. 

The One. His human link. His key to freedom. 

But Smith disobeyed the screams of rejection from his flesh and blood, code and metal. He ignored the cries that echoed from one skyscraper to the next. However many times it reached his ears, he did not read it.

The lenses blocked it. His mask of anonymity. His sunglasses. His saviour.

Those emotionless black sheets of glass that covered his unreal eyes saved him from being lost forever. His two lenses. They hid his core. And no one would ever be able to know his computerised thoughts, ever.

_However…._

_My future does not lie here anymore, not here in the fetish glare of the Matrix._

Agent Smith's future….

It lied in dystopia.

Beyond.


	3. Three Choices

Three Choices 

Smith had the world at his feet. Or so he thought. He was, deep inside, a lost and confused child, with only three simple choices to make:

Live, die, or obey.

The machine in Smith longed for the latter; to return to the same old system of repeated days in the Matrix, living an obedient and stiff life. The man in him wished to live, safely in the folded arms of his old refuge, his old time, when he did not have a twisted section in his coding of life. The child in Smith refused all. 

So he was pushed into the wastelands of the Matrix…. The place where dreams collide and nightmares meet, and all but the bravest are left to perish.

The machine graveyard.

Rejections of virtual long lost universes were dumped here, and thought of no more, as were memories of the horror and mess in the world. This was the place of exile for those programs regarded as a waste of time and effort. 

Smith was not allowed to return from whence he had come. His home was here and now.

And his choice was to live in hell, with the forever shifting spirits of the true Matrix, the haunted wastelands…. The death of all. 

He was here. And he would have to be, for as long as he existed now. For he had broken the rules. And now he had to pay dearly for his mistake. The mistake that almost cost him his life. 

Abandon all hope, Smith. 

For hope is something that machines can't do. 

And the choice has automatically been made for you, Agent.

Live, die and obey. All at the same time.


	4. Four Lives

Four Lives 

And so here was Smith, in the exile that lay beneath the mask of the Matrix. In this world, everything seemed to be hidden behind their own shield, to hide their weaknesses, and to hide the failure of their past lives.

Smith had been given three chances already. Had already disobeyed twice before. Technically, he was never meant to be in this moment of time. His three strikes were over and out. And this fourth was all he was going to get. Whether it was away from the world he had known or not. 

He had never felt so lost before.

The sky burnt a murderous and heavy orange, the sun glaring down at him like an angry eye. It reflected off the surface of his sunglasses and turned his sense of loss into anger. He felt like his life was one big mistake.

But thinking about it, Smith realised he had never been alive at all. No one had. They were still trapped, as he was, in the system of living dreams. In this Matrix of lies and betrayals.

The system had betrayed many of its own kind. The proof was all around Smith now. His shoes stood upon the rusted carcass of some great machine, sentinel like in appearance. Maybe it had been transferred from the real world into this one, Smith mused, occupying his mind from all the lives he had wasted before this one.

Four lives. Three wastes. And one wasteland.

Smith observed the clouds that hovered low upon the ground before him, to remind him how arrogant he had been, how foolish. And how he had let it all slip from his hand to the dirt that his polished shoes now stood upon. 

And how his extra lives had not been lived at all.

They had been lied through to the end of their tattered existence, and the start of his fourth count was like the end of all the others. Mangled. Distorted. Dreamt. 

And not there at all.

But he was here, in the true Matrix, right now.

And it was as real as he could ever have imagined it. 

For if it hadn't been real, would he have been able to feel the tears build up behind his eyes? 


	5. Five Tears

Five Tears 

He stood still in the silence of time, condemned to the here and now of the shadows of his life. His mistakes were imprinted into his program for all to see:

Reject. Mistake. Freak.

It shamed his suit. And the words of insult flung from the Matrix far away caused those five precious tears to build up and burst forth from Smith's eyes.

They slowly trickled down his face and branded his skin with the mark of a human, of a weak and vulnerable machine, of nothing the Matrix considered fanciful anymore. He was lost here, and no one would reach out and brush Smith's tears from upon his surface. 

_Why am I able to cry? Cry like a human._

_Perhaps this is the Matrix's way of punishing me. Giving me humanlike qualities. _

_Yet I deserve it. Disobeying my flesh and blood._

Smith's five lonely tears slowly splashed upon the dusty floor of the dystopian land, forming a five-pointed constellation in front of him. The wetness of those tears startled Smith, and as they were absorbed into the greedy soil of the machine graveyard, Smith felt all but grief upon his damned existence.

No escape. That's how Smith read the soil.

He bent down and saw the marks his tears had left. Reaching out with one trembling finger, Smith began to draw, striking the red earth with his cold distraught. And his finger created a symbol upon the ground.

It was a star with five points, each point being the place of departure for his five sorry tears. A star that did not shine at all. This star held only virtual and imaginary nightmares of a long lost and rusted program that went by the name of Smith….

Smith traced a circle around his star. It was trapped as he was upon the shape he had created. And that showed he was still like the Matrix, for he had trapped that star like the Matrix had trapped him. 

A pentagram. Just for him. To show him he was in hell.

His hell.


	6. Six Wishes

Six Wishes 

Smith had become dry inside. Those five tears were all he had. No more. Just him and the drifting spirit of the restless other half of the Matrix. It pressed down unto him until he could take it no more.

Yet no one would be able to hear him scream, even if he wanted to….

His polished black shoes suddenly seemed caked with the redness of the soil. His suit seemed to be creased and torn, and covered with wounds. His tie the same. And his sunglasses seemed chipped, cracked, useless.

Branded as he was. He still held them close to his eyes. He could not let go the smallest chance that still might be hovering over yonder….

This place had no yonder. Smith was beginning to face it. For his wrong doings, this was his price to pay. 

And he was going to have to face it, whether he wanted to or not. 

For maybe one day, the Matrix would welcome him back with open and remorseful arms. Maybe one day, Smith would become an Agent again. And maybe one day, Smith's six wishes would take him back where he belonged. He would flow back into the true system again, ready and willing. 

Maybe this would happen, in the distant future.

But for now, Smith had no future. This place had no time pressed upon it. Living was forever, now and never.

For this is the world beyond. This is the exile beneath. This is the punishment.

This is Smith.

:: END ::


End file.
